Pressure is building for Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees to curtail a programme of spending cuts from within the Labour Party.

A group within his own party has voted to call for a 'no-cuts' budget to be passed and for city council reserves to be used to plug the shortfall in the money needed to protect services and jobs.

Mr Rees has faced fierce condemnation from anti-cuts groups across Bristol for this year's budget, which highlighted the need for a series of radical savings each year to prevent Bristol City Council’s deficit from reaching £106 million by 2022.

While calls to stop the cuts had so far come from external activist groups, the latest vote from within his own party represents a significant shift in the pressure on the Mayor.

A Labour Party source, who has asked not to be named, has told the Bristol Post that the vote to set a no-cuts budget for 2018/19 was taken at the Bristol Labour Party Local Campaign Forum on Wednesday of last week.

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The motion was supported by public sector union campaign group the Bristol & District Anti-Cuts Alliance, which has started a no-cuts petition on the council website.

Bristol anti-cuts march

The forum has no official powers over the Mayor and it is Mr Rees who will ultimately decide how future budgets should be set. And the result does not necessarily represent the view of every Labour member in the city, as only a small minority of members took part.

But it will be interesting to see how Mr Rees reacts to this vote over the coming months. In many ways the close-run no-cuts motion represents the current battle raging in Labour as a whole - with one side eager to pull the party to the left while the other fights to keep its central position.

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Bristol has a strong Momentum faction, which the Post understands is largely in support of the motion and the Mayor cannot afford to alienate. Momentum is the grassroots activist organisation set up in support of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of Labour.

However, Mr Rees regularly cites Bristol's need for credibility in Whitehall, and worsening the authority's long-term financial security or being seen as unwilling to streamline services would surely put paid to this.

The reserve calculation

Bristol City Council currently has more than £200 million in reserves which range from cash in the bank to property assets.

The council is required to keep between five and six per cent of its net revenue budget in reserve, to help guard against unforeseen circumstances. This equates to £20million in the 2017/18 budget and leaves the Bristol authority with roughly £180 million 'spare'.

While £180million may seem like a large sum, it is important to put it in to the context of the council’s overall annual spend, which in 2017/18 will be just over £1 billion.

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Council officers have so far managed to find around £67 million of savings to the plug the £106million deficit - which includes the £33 million savings this financial year bolstered by £11 million of reserve funding.

The council needs to make at least £29.1 million worth of savings between 2018 and 2022 and it is not yet known if it plans to use any reserves to achieve this.

Mayor Marvin Rees will have to save £106 million from the council budget by 2022

While sympathetic, Mr Rees has always maintained that a one-off or series of no-cuts budgets would not be a realistic option.

Speaking in June, he said: “We have to balance our budget. If we set an unlawful budget or just refuse to save money then we will end up with the government stepping in and appointing commissioners to run the council’s finances.

“I think this would be far worse for the city and its people, so I’d rather we make the hard choices together and keep local control over our future.”

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Maintaining the services currently up for the chop would cost the authority £4.7million this year, but this is likely to increase over the coming years and, paired with ever-decreasing funding from central government, puts the council in a difficult position.

Mr Rees has previously attempted to harness Bristol’s strong anti-cuts movement though outward attacks on central government, such as his anti-austerity rally and ‘green paper’.

It is as yet unknown if this motion from within his party will change his long-term plan. Mr Rees has declined to comment on the result of the no-cuts motion.